December 2007
A project for the Second Shenzhen Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism
Shenzhen, CN
curator :: Beatrice LEANZA
in collaboration :: 何颖雅 Elaine W. HO
graphics & uniform design :: ourwork.is
artists // 宋琨 SONG Kun (artist; Beijing, CN), 洪启乐 HONG Qile (sound artist/musician; Hangzhou, CN), Can ALTAY & Asli KALINOGLU (architect & artist; Ankara, TR), Patrick TUTTOFUOCO (artist; Milano, IT), PROGRAM initiative for art + architecture/Carson CHAN & Fotini LAZARIDOU-HATZIGOGA (architecture & design; Berlin, DE)
DeadEnd is predicated on the disconcerting experience of urban destinations as increasingly orchestrated spectacles, dissimulating participation, observation and accumulation in “pictorialized time/space” resorts (M. Christine BOYER). This form of programmed anticipation, widely deployed in strategies of city marketing, tourism enterprise and cultural entertainment, is one that appropriates the concept of termination not as an end in space but an end in experience, which disposes of the cultural mediation of difference by severing the city from its possible (multiple) reconstructions. Five new works have been commissioned by BAO Atelier as tour guides/mental scapes for pedicab journeys from the main Biennale venue into greater Shenzhen. Under the urgency of a city of expiration, each work and its concordant route is assigned one of five pedicabs to be stationed at the exit of the primary exhibition hall of the biennial at the DeadEnd station.